Harvesting a Poplar burl

[Brian Horais]

Late last year my brother-in-law dropped off a very large Poplar burl he had been promising for a while. He had just cut down some trees and this Poplar was one of them. I started researching how to cut up burls and found a few items on the web including discussions and YouTube videos. The process was still a little 'sketchy' so I decided to do this writeup on my 'burl dissection' to give readers some additional insights in case they are thinking about processing burls. The attached PDF provides a full writeup on my process and some finished examples. Here are a few teasers. Enjoy

 

[Dean Center]

Brian, is that a Populus Poplar or a Tulip Poplar? It doesn't affect your observations, I'm just curious about what for us is an exotic wood.

 

[Brian Horais]

Dean, it definitely was not Tulip Poplar. It was a fairly tall tree with few branches down low - so I'm guessing it was Populus Poplar.